To Dahshur residents like project founder and director Charlotte Sullivan’s dismay, ‘with the disappearance of the lake, our area ceased to attract the quantity and variety of birds that had frequented the region over the course of centuries.’ It is in this same vein that the Mosaics of Dahshur atelier fittingly coincides with Safarkhan’s own ethos which espouses the continual dialogue between the old and the new.
Safarkhan is honored to showcase an unprecedented undertaking from Tuesday 8 to Tuesday 29 April, exhibiting the exploits of a humble mosaicist atelier, the only one of its kind in Egypt. Nestled within the lush farmlands of Dahshur, this quaint locale appears alluringly lost in time. Like the forgotten art they are laboriously reviving it appears centuries removed from the chaotic pangs of the swelling urban metropolis threatening to envelop them. This fledgling project is the brainchild of the inspirational Charlotte Sullivan, an American professor of Art History who is no stranger to Egypt herself. Sullivan is primarily based in Italy where she formerly taught, before becoming a devoted student there in the art of mosaics herself. For almost five decades, Charlotte has spent the autumn to spring months in her beloved second home of Dahshur, where she has been intimately engaged with founding and operating this burgeoning atelier. Charlotte has since tirelessly spearheaded the mentoring, establishment, chronicling and promulgation of this initiative and its artisans, with the ebullient charm she is so admired for by the locals. Remaining faithful to her vision, these villagers turned mosaicists, are in her words; ‘executing original designs that reflect both their cultural heritage and the rural setting in which they live.’
Well before the Romans adopted the practice and assumed the mantle of preeminent mosaicists to the rest of the world, albeit in a style that preserved the interstitial separation between each individual piece, it was in the Egypt of antiquity that this artform was born over 2,300 years ago. Of the notable difference in stylistic execution, Sullivan contends; ‘the seeming defect of snugly fitted marble pieces was an immense plus. We were in an admittedly fortuitous fashion, attempting not just a revival of the art of marble mosaics but a revival of the distinctive method of making mosaics that was developed on home ground.’ Rooted in her palpable passion for ancient Egypt which is tellingly not lost on the Egypt of today, the villagers who began as Sullivan’s protégés, are now fully-fledged mosaicists. They are working with the same rudimentary tools and materials as their forebearers, and diligently following the method first established in Alexandria in the third century BC. The collective eventually coalesced around the unifying artistic direction of employing their skills towards capturing the native birds of Egypt, many of them immortalized as hieroglyphics, by faithfully depicting the plentiful avifauna of this timeless land.
The King’s Lake (Birket el Malik) is the panoramic corner of Dahshur that Charlotte and the mosaicists call home. An eponym of King Farouk who was a regular visitor for duck hunting during the 1940s, it referred to the extensive seasonal body of water that would flood in summer from the extremities of Dahshur’s fertile farmlands across the desert plateau to where the Bent, Black and Red Pyramids augustly still stand. Unfortunately, the last time this lake re-emerged was in 2015 after decades of controlled flooding due to the Aswan High Dam. Since then, to residents like Sullivan’s dismay, ‘with the disappearance of the lake, our area ceased to attract the quantity and variety of birds that had frequented the region over the course of centuries.’ It is herein that we can appreciate the multifarious purpose of this commendable initiative; not only in reviving an ancient heritage craft, or to provide outlets of opportunity and fulfillment for the otherwise underprivileged, but also as a clarion call for conservation efforts of Egypt’s natural bounty. It is in this same vein that the Mosaics of Dahshur atelier fittingly coincides with Safarkhan’s own ethos which espouses the continual dialogue between the old and the new. Indeed, for Sullivan ‘it was inevitable that I would come to see the theme of birds as a link between the remote past and the present.’